FOREST CITY, Maine (NEWS CENTER) -- A team of archaeologists has spent the last several weeks gathering and collecting artifacts along the banks of the Saint Croix River on property owned by the federal government behind the U.S. Customs Port of Entry in Forest City. Dr. Ellen Cowie is director of the Northeast Archaeology Research Center, which was hired as a subcontractor for US Customs and Border Protection to recover artifacts at the site.

"We're excavating the remains of a small sort of encampment maybe where a family stopped over for a couple of nights made some stone tools and what we're finding our those stone tools and chips from stone tool making," Dr. Cowie says the artifacts are from a period known as the Paleo-Indian period following the last Ice Age in North America.

Her team found artifacts known as flakes, which are stone chippings or shavings that are the by-products of making spearheads or other stone tools. They also found some tools including a "graver" which is used to poke holes in bones or shells.

"The materials that Native Americans used for stone tools are sort of distinctive. It's just not any sort of rock it's not granite typically, but it's stone that would break in a certain way that would allow spearheads to be made and other scraping tools," Cowie explained.

US Customs and Border Protection needed to conduct this dig and have these artifacts recovered before it could move ahead with a planned renovation of the Forest City Port of Entry. Dr. Cowie says her team will bring the artifiacts to her lab in Farmington, analyze them and produce a report for CBP and the state. She says the site has already been determined eligible for the National Register of Historic Places and she says the artifacts will likely go to the Maine State Museum.

Our Commitment to Chess

Scholarships for Chess Femmes

Our Commitment to Chess

2012 Goddesschess Canadian Women's Closed Chess Championship

2014 SPONSORSHIPS

Hales Corners Chess Challenge XIXApril 12, 2014Milwaukee, WIPrizes for female players in Open and Reserve sections and paid entry to next HCCC for top female finisher in each section. This is Goddesschess' 12th HCCC!

Goddesschess Fighting Spirit Award

2013 U.S. Women's Chess Championship

2013 SPONSORSHIPS

Hales Corners Chess Challenge XVIIIOctober 12, 2013Milwaukee, WIRecord prize money awarded to chess femmes - $800!In honor of National Chess Day and the one year anniversary of the passing of our webmaster, researcher and writer, Don McLean, additional prizes of $150 were awarded to the top two male finishers in each Section.Milwaukee Summer Challenge IIJune 15 - 16, 2013Milwaukee, WIPrizes for the chess femmes and funding a best game prize

Search This Blog

"Advanced Chess" Leon 2002

About Me

I'm one of the founders of Goddesschess, which went online May 6, 1999. I earned an under-graduate degree in history and economics going to college part-time nights, weekends and summer school while working full-time, and went on to earn a post-graduate degree (J.D.) I love the challenge of research, and spend my spare time reading and writing about my favorite subjects, travelling and working in my gardens. My family and my friends are most important in my life. For the second half of my life, I'm focusing on "doable" things to help local chess initiatives, starting in my own home town. And I'm experiencing a sort of personal "Renaissance" that is leaving me rather breathless...